Protestant clergy were driven out and English sympathisers outlawed by
name, in the "hugest Bill of Attainder which the world has seen."

Admiral Lord Charles Beresford points out the danger from a naval point
of view of the French attempts to use Ireland as a base for operations
against England, both under Louis XIV. and under the Republican
Directory. He quotes Admiral Mahan as saying that the movement which
designed to cut the English communications in St. George's Channel
while an invading party landed in the south of Ireland was a strictly
strategic movement and would be as dangerous to England now as it was in
1690. When Grattan extorted from England's weakness the unworkable and
impracticable constitution of 1782, the danger which had always been
present became immensely increased. In less than three years from the
period of boasted final adjustment, Ireland came to a breach with
England on the important question of trade and navigation. Then, again,
at the time of the Regency, the Irish Parliament was actually ready to
choose a person in whom to rest the sovereign executive power of the
nation, different from him whom the British Parliament were prepared to
designate.

In 1795, when the French had made themselves masters of Brabant,
Flanders, and Holland, the rebel government of United Irishmen was so
well-established in Ireland that, as Lord Clare, the Irish Chancellor,
subsequently admitted in the House of Lords, Ireland was for some weeks
in a state of actual separation from Great Britain. When the great
Rebellion of 1798 broke out, the French Directory sent assistance to the
Irish rebels in order to facilitate the greater scheme--the conquest of
England and of Europe. When we come to estimate the danger which the
grant of Home Rule to Ireland would bring to the safety of England, we
are faced with two considerations. In the first place, the movements of